Al Pacino Remains 'Haunted' by Childhood Injury to His Penis: 'Such Pain'

Mar. 15, 2025

Al Pacino.Photo:Dominik Bindl/Getty

Dominik Bindl/Getty

Al Pacinois recalling an awkwardly painful childhood memory.

In his new memoirSonny Boy, the Oscar winner, 84, details an injury incurred around age 10 involving his penis — “one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life,” as he calls it.

“I seemed to cheat death on a regular basis,” writes Pacino in the book’s first chapter covering his upbringing in New York’s South Bronx. “I was like a cat with many more than nine lives. I had more mishaps and accidents than I can count.”

One that leaves him “squeamish to tell it now,” the author continues, went as follows: “I was walking on a thin, iron fence, doing my tightrope dance. It had been raining all morning, and sure enough, I slipped and fell, and the iron bar hit me directly between my legs.”

Pacino recalls being “in such pain that I could hardly walk home. An older guy saw me groaning in the street, picked me up, and carried me” to an aunt’s apartment. There, young Pacino and his family waited for a doctor to make a house call.

Penguin Press

“I lay there on the bed, with my pants completely down around my ankles as the three women in my life — my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother — poked and prodded at my penis in a semipanic,” Pacino writes. “I thought, God, please take me now, as I heard them whispering things to one another as they conducted their inspection.”

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Sonny Boyincludes more memories from Pacino’s childhood, including the few times he could remember his divorced parents being together. In addition to mishaps on neighborhood fences, he details time spent stealing food and jumping subway turnstiles with friends. “Making mischief and running away from authority figures was our pastime,” he writes.

“It was due,” Pacino recentlytold PEOPLEof deciding to write the memoir. “I’m in my 85th year. When you get there and you start experiencing age, you understand why they do put things down.”

He added, “At least according to me, I’ve had quite a big life.”

Sonny Boy, released Oct. 15 from Penguin Press, is available wherever books are sold.

source: people.com